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Thursday, June 12, 2014

In the manner in which nondenominational, vaguely deontological benedictions were delivered to us in college:

We call this day upon the Great Benevolent Substance-Form That Infuses The Universe With Reason to preserve us against the irrational scourge of global soccer fandom by which we are quadrennially visited. From Thee, we seek patience and forbearance, especially those of us married to individuals of South American descent or those from the benighted nations of Europe and Africa whose peoples worship globular gods of synthetic leather on vast altars of turf. We ask

That when the screaming from the pub on the corner downstairs threatens our sleep, we may calmly close our windows and return to our slumbers and not launch projectiles in its direction.
That when we are shocked out of our sidewalk reveries by a car bearing foreign flags blaring its horn for no traffic-related reason, we are able to re-compose ourselves and continue on our paths rather than screaming obscenities after it.
That when we speak to our spouses whose heads are glued to their tablets, they do not respond with, "Gogogogogo...YES! GOAL! GOAL!" and then take a victory lap around our living rooms before re-affixing their tablets to their faces.
That when we are trapped in conversation about the relative merits of the various priests of this fanatical false religion, we may be permitted to pass through them unharmed with a non-committal response of "yes" to every question.
That when we are in close proximity to disputes waged by partisans of its competing sects, we may be preserved from the ensuing blows of their fists.
That when we are in the vicinity of partisans of a sect which has gained a recent victory, we may be spared the necessity of engaging in celebratory dance with them.
That when partisans around us have imbibed overzealously, we may avoid being the inadvertent receptacle for the contents of their stomachs.
That when we are dragged to viewings of these cultic rituals, we recall that with each additional enactment, we come closer to the conclusion of the whole.
That we may simply ignore our Facebook, Twitter, Feedly, and NYT feeds for the duration.

We beg of Thee a speedy deliverance from these and other instances of unreason which will beset us in the coming weeks, which we understand come as a logically necessary re-education for our ethically unsupportable actions of the past four years. For these things do we beseech you, Great Substance-Form, whose wisdom is complete and whose judgments are a priori just.

But is it not very nearly written that there is a time for soccer and a time for no soccer? It follows that these recent enthusiasms are consonant with scripture, though the other legs of Hooker's stool are admittedly absent.

Yes, so it is written, and if not in so many words, our flexible non-denominationalism perhaps permits that we add those words in. We ask only for patience in passing through these trials; we do not question the perfect reason of the Great Substance-Form, for we cannot hope to rise to its level, at least until we have read all the Critiques in the original.